Vijay Hazare Trophy 2019: Rinku Singh makes his return to Uttar Pradesh squad

What's the story?

Uttar Pradesh's upcoming all-rounder, Rinku Singh will make his comeback to cricket after serving a three-month suspension as the state board has named him in the Uttar Pradesh squad for the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2019. Samarth Singh is the captain of the team which also features the likes of Ankit Rajpoot, Shivam Mavi and Akshdeep Nath.

The background

Vijay Hazare Trophy is the elite A-List domestic tournament of India where all states and union territories battle it out to win the coveted trophy. Uttar Pradesh has won the tournament once when the team shared the trophy with Mumbai in 2004-05 while in the 2005-06 edition, they fell short in the final.

Some top-class ODI players like Suresh Raina, Praveen Kumar, Bhuvneshwar Kumar have represented the state at the domestic level.

The heart of the matter

The UPCA (Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association) announced their squad for the 2019 season of Vijay Hazare Trophy which goes as follows -

Squad - Samarth Singh (Captain), Almas Shaukat, Abhishek Goswami, Akshdeep Nath, Rinku Singh, Hardeep Singh, Upendra Yadav, Ankit Rajpoot, Shivam Mavi, Mohsin Khan, Mohit Jangra, Saurabh Kumar, Shanu Saini, Ankit Chaudhary, Mukesh Kumar

The Kolkata Knight Riders all-rounder, Rinku Singh has returned to the team after a 3 months suspension which was handed to him by BCCI for his participation in an unauthorized T20 league in Abu Dhabi. In an interview with Sportstar, Rinku revealed that he had not stopped working hard during this period and added that,

“Whatever has happened has happened. I have learned from my mistake and it’s time to move on.”

Regular captain Suresh Raina's participation is uncertain. Hence, the board has assigned the captaincy to Samarth Singh.

What's next?

Uttar Pradesh will kick off their Vijay Hazare Trophy 2019 campaign in Vadodara on 25th September.

Also See - Vijay Hazare Schedule